Restoring the Dream for the 99 Percent

On Tuesday, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus released a grand proposal to help rebuild America and its embattled middle class—and it couldn’t come at a better time.

As Republicans continue to recycle their failed economic policies of the last decade—tax cuts for the wealthy and lax rules for rogue industries—The RESTORE the American Dream Act provides a serious alternative to getting our future back on track. The legislation outlines both short- and longer-term strategies for rebooting our nation’s progress, and it achieves robust deficit reduction over the next 10 years. It’s a walk-and-chew-gum-at-the-same-time approach to putting our nation back to work and getting our fiscal house in order.

Most immediately, the bill would create 5 million jobs over the next two years through direct hiring to repair our nation’s antiquated system of roads, bridges and schools. Specifically, 2.2 million people would secure jobs in basic infrastructure repair and another 650,000 eager job seekers would go to work in construction and maintenance jobs to make long overdue improvements in public schools across the country.